While piling pork steaks on the grillover the holiday weekend-
it took me back to a time
of my young married life
when my husband was a
vegetarian.
I wasn't really sure
why he was a vegetarian-
and being young and in love-
I never bothered to ask.
All I really knew for sure
is that my dreams of whipping
up fantastic hearty meals in the kitchen
were basically screwed.
No breaded pork chops
or double cheese burgers
or steaks as thick as my ankles.
No fried chicken or sugar ham
or fresh lunchmeat sandwiches.
Life was beans.
And tuna.
And salads out of the kazoo.
But, I did have a stash of bologna
that was all mine.
After living in a household with
eight siblings-
having that pound of
Blue Bell bologna all to myself
was like having a pot of gold.
I think my husband kinda
blames me for his
sudden and startling
fall from the wagon.
But how many freakin' ways
can you make a bean burger,
a tuna sandwich
or a garden salad?
He blamed it on the fact that
he was virtually starving because
of my lack of cooking skills-
NOT the fact that he started
working for a meat company.
But in my opinion,
it was the giant slabs of bacon,
the buckets of pork tenderloins
and the rolls of savory sausage
that he handled every day
that turned him back
into a meat eating carnivore.
In fact, he was crowned
Sausage King two years in a row!
Of course,
going from a high fiber,
fresh fruit and vegetable diet-
to a smorgasbord of
greasy meat products-
can pile on the weight.
After 33 years,
he's never really forgiven me
for not throwing out my bologna
and joining him
in his effort to wipe out
the entire United States lettuce crop.
But,
he's kinda forgotten.
Tonight we'll throw
a couple of rib eyes on the grill
and I'll secretly think about the days
when he was Sausage King
and I was Bologna Queen
and nothing else really mattered.
And when he asks me to pass him
the baked beans,
I'll just smile...
